I've come across many many many strange patent applications, and hence strange inventions, over my career as a patent attorney. And that's saying a lot, because I still have a long ways to go until retirement. Well, it's only January, but I already came across what could likely be the “patent (application) of the year.” The title of this application is “Planar Waveguide Apparatus with Diffraction Element(s) and System Employing Same,” and it is assigned to Magic Leap, Inc. Apparently, Google lead a $542 million round of funding for Magic Leap to work on augmented reality glasses that can create digital objects that appear to exist in the world around you. Are you impressed?

So I had to check out their application and see what the fuss was all about. First of all, holy crap. 119 pages of drawings... 181 pages of spec. Are you impressed now? (If you couldn't tell, I usually look at the number of pages before looking at something.) No way I'm reading this whole thing. But I got a great synopsis of the drawings from another blog, and it's pretty hilarious. The drawings in the beginning are pretty normal looking patent drawings. Then you get to about FIG. 42A, and things start getting a little weird. The application starts to describe all these hand motions that you can do to interact with digital objects that appear in front of you, but don't actually exist. In FIG. 61D, for example, you see a guy looking at photographs of football players, zooming in on their shoes (...to see where he can buy them I guess?). Then you see a mom grocery shopping with her daughter, who is playing a game where you're supposed to find a monster hiding at the grocery store. It's a little frightening, but very funny. There are more examples, like a lady looking at her own heart floating in the air at her doctor's office, and a landscape artist running across gophers while riding a lawn mower. I don't know if the applicant really needed to show all these examples, but the patent examiner will get a kick out of the drawings. This application hasn't been examined yet, but you better believe I'll be checking up on this application to see how the prosecution goes.